Review: All the King’s Men: Silver-Spooned Goons

At this point, coming into my third year at King’s College London I’ve finally come to terms that this is not a radical university. Excluding the FemSoc (who do some pretty great activism), we have a thriving TorySoc, a LabourSoc who are just the TorySoc trying to rebel against Mummy and Daddy, and the less said about LGBTSoc the better. It is only from these conditions that the twee hellspawn that is All the King’s Men could have been born.

For those of you who don’t frequent Conservatopia (as I sometimes refer to KCL), All the King’s Men are our famous-for-an-accapella group – think Glee set at Eton. And for those of you from the university, we’ve all seen them. In the café doing The Lion Sleeps Tonight for the billionth time. At open days doing a version of Boom Boom Pow that even Will.i.am would be ashamed of…

Yep, you made a guy wearing THAT hat embarrassed.

Basically, when King’s created Bloc Party these guys sprang up to counteract them. Which would be fine – just let the poor guys sing, they clearly love it and they’re very popular, you cry. I bet you’ve never done an American tour, you critical little shit, you scream (actually that one’s probably my parents). But this is exactly the problem. They are very popular. People hear them and forever associate them with King’s, see us as twee private school kids. Lots of people. One day you’re going to try and get a job somewhere and at the interview they’re just going to have ‘awimbaweyawimbawey’ endlessly going through their head. It’ll be a marvel if you make it out of that situation alive, never mind with a job!

One minute into any of their performances and it’s like social mobility never happened. This is parlour entertainment for the Earl of Monacleshire, not a world-leading university for queer theory in the centre of the world’s coolest city. If these are the King’s Men then we need an abdication.

…oh and for Christ’s sake there are soooooo many more songs with lions/roaring in the title. Go back to your manors until you’ve learned Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Gold Lion

11 thoughts on “Review: All the King’s Men: Silver-Spooned Goons”

Pure dribble, All the King’s men are a wonderful addition around campus that raises the bar of the student experience for all! I can see this article being written in a blind rage of jealousy towards such a talented group.

it’s a sad but true fact that for pretty much any tight singing group you have to be classically trained which only comes from singing lessons, for which you inherently have to have money, so of course they are going to be a bit posh!

THIS IS AMAZING. Thank you! When i was at KCL they used to literally do my nut in. Especially the fact King’s Marketing wheeled them out for every.single.event and if you tried to criticise them publicly it wasn’t even worth the bother you’d get. Have you ever seen the total cringe video they made to ‘promote’ King’s? If I’d been a student applying I would have actually taken the university off my UCAS. Here’s the video – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_vqb8jkOOs comments got disabled as there were so many negative ones! Enjoy!

Mate this is shit, they’re not my thing but at least I appreciate they’re good at what they do. Maybe next time you try and “review” something actually review it instead of coming across as a bitter audition reject.